The Journal of Distance Education has just published two articles in its latest issue at http://www.jofde.ca/ . We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

Abstract – This study examines online instructors’ views of on-site facilitators’ practices and activities that help high school students taking online courses. A qualitative analysis of end-of-course interview data with online instructors was undertaken. The resultant codes were mapped onto and used to expand the teaching presence element of the Community of Inquiry framework. While classroom-based facilitation mapped onto all three of the teaching presence components, facilitating discourse was the core activity that most on-site facilitators engaged in and setting the climate for learning was the primary responsibility of the facilitator. Additional findings, implications, limitations, and research directions are discussed.

Abstract This qualitative study examined a Canadian virtual school learning experience for students and the kinds of support and assistance most frequently used and valued by students learning in a virtual environment. Students were interviewed and observed during their virtual school classes. In-school teachers were also interviewed and online teachers were also observed. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method. Findings indicated that during their scheduled asynchronous class time students were often assigned seatwork or provided time to work on assignments, however, students rarely used this time to complete virtual schoolwork. It was during their synchronous class time that both the students and the online teachers were most productive. Students sought assistance from local classmates before turning to their online teacher or in-school teachers, and did not use the other support systems provided by the virtual school.

This is the long awaited overview article from my dissertation. This is actually the second article from my dissertation, as I added a context chapter that was published prior to the submission of my dissertation. In addition, I hope to craft a specific manuscript from each of the three research questions over the next few months. I also have one article in press, one manuscript under review, and one manuscript under revising from data taken from the four participants that I had to exclude from my dissertation study due to incomplete data sets. So I am hoping that in the end my dissertation will result in eight different articles.

It has actually been a good thirty days for me, as since 11 June – including this article – I have had four that have made it into print: